Australian Haiku Society

Call for Submissions: 2026 confluence Poetry Prize

What does it mean to die? To accompany another being as their life ends? Or to face your own death? Poets across the ages have responded with grief, rage, wonder, acceptance, and beauty. We want to read what death and dying mean to you.

confluence invites you to submit one haiku, tanka, or other Japanese short-form poem on the theme of death and dying. The best poems will share in $500 in prize money and be published in confluence. Submissions are open now through May 1, 2026. There is no fee to submit.

Learn more and submit your poem at www.confluencehaiku.com/prize

Submitted by Rowan Beckett Minor, Associate Editor, confluence

Catchment – Poetry of Place: submissions open 21 March

Catchment – Poetry of Place will remain open for contributions between 21 March and 21 May, towards release of the journal’s 6th issue online on 21 June, 2026. Guidelines and our submission portal can both be accessed through the following link:
https://www.bawbawartsalliance.org.au/bcms/catchment/

As before, Australian poets working in Japanese-based forms can offer: either up to 5 tanka of a stand-alone nature; or a sequence of pieces, no larger than 4 tanka in total.
Contributors may submit up to 3 poems in free verse also/ instead, each as long as 30 lines, likewise showing a sense of location.
A biographical statement (no more than 50 words) should be submitted for each issue as well, please.

Discussions of Tanka on offer

In the meantime, 2026 will continue to bring you essays on poems of place, released each month under Catchment News & Views, accessible on the journal’s home page.

To coincide with the opening of our upcoming submission period, on 21 March I will be posting an evaluation of mine about portrayals of the marshland bird snipe in both haiku and tanka.

AHS members may likewise be interested in listening to a half-hour interview with me about tanka – broadcast recently on 3CR Community Radio (855 AM) – as presented by Di Cousens, a fellow member of the Fringe Myrtles Haiku Group in Melbourne:
https://www.3cr.org.au/spoken-word/episode/discovering-tanka

On 21 April, readers can also look forward to a new piece by our co-editor Jo McInerney, who will discuss interactive sequencing created by tanka poets working in collaboration.

Rodney Williams
Editor, Catchment – Poetry of Place
Baw Baw Arts Alliance, Gunaikurnai country, West Gippsland, Victoria

Two upcoming events for Sydney poets 18th & 24th March

The next Gadigal Ginko will take place on Wednesday 18th March, 2026 from 10am at Barangaroo. Please see the Gadigal Ginko webpage for further details and to register.

As previously announced, the Illawong Haiku Group invites other Sydney poets to join them at the Hurstville Museum and Gallery on Tuesday, 24th March from 10.30 am to 12.00 midday for a writing session based on the current ‘Snakes & Mirrors’ exhibition.

Illawong Haiku Group Summer Meeting

3 March 2026

Due to an unfavourable weather forecast, Ros Pitt, Pat Meredith, Rita Potente, Kathleen Ann, Alison Miller and Margaret Mahony met at Margaret’s home in Sutherland, with apologies from Carol Reynolds, who was unwell.

Members’ News – February 2026

Welcome to the first issue of Members’ News for 2026. We wish all readers a creatively satisfying year of haiku and related forms.

Rare Opportunity

Have ever you benefitted from the support and encouragement of other haiku poets, perhaps when you were new to haiku? Would you like to pay some of that kindness forward while connecting with many other poets and helping to shape the future of the Australian Haiku Society offers? What is this rare opportunity?

Thank you, Alison

The Australian Haiku Society Executive Committee would like to thank Alison Rogers for her hard work as Secretary from April 2024 until recently. Unfortunately, for personal reasons she had to relinquish this role before the end of her term. No doubt many haiku group leaders and others in the Australian and broader haiku communities are similarly grateful for her volunteer service and would join us in wishing Alison all the best for the future.

Report on the Bindii Meeting Sunday February 8, 2026

Julia Wakefield, Maureen Sexton, Ewan Rourke and Maeve Archibald met on Sunday September 28 at 4 pm, using Zoom. Apologies were received from Lynette Arden, Stella Damarjati and Radhika de Silva. The attendees brought some haiku for review and Radhika sent her haiku in spite of her absence.